A Page Seventy Six To Eighty Seven Girl
by tobinfic
Summary: Post beetles, the ARC's systems are still a bit wonky. Jess, Emily and Abby are trapped in the ladies locker room with five bottles of champagne and a bag of hen night goodies. If only their conversation wasn't being relayed across the whole of the ARC...


Jess was hopping around the changing room, one leg in her tights, when the alarm sounded, the lights started to flash and general chaos broke loose.

It was times like this, she thought viciously, that she wished she was more like Abby. Was Abby currently hobbled by a pair of tights, lurching desperately across the floor? No, she was not. Abby was already wearing the strapless, skin-tight bandage dress she had picked out for the hen night, and so was now able to grab her comm. unit and start demanding answers from whomever was on duty up in the control room. And she was looking amazing while doing it.

Emily, born in a tightsless time, was even more useful, already punching the release code into the door lock and frowning as the readout displayed an error message. While she had adapted admirably to the twenty first century, she wasn't quite ready to deal with lycra, or obscenely short hemlines. She was wearing jeans but managed to fill them out in a way that Jess knew she never could.

Jess…well, Jess was still half naked. She quickly rectified that by tugging on the scarlet dress she'd picked out as perfect hen-night clothing. She'd even broken out her sacred pair of Louboutins, the red sole matching the dress perfectly.

All the while, alarm bells screamed, lights flashed and Jess could hear hurried footsteps pounding in the corridor outside the women's showers and locker room. Loud metallic noises were the internal lockdown shutters falling into place, she could tell.

"You know," she said loudly, to be heard over the noise, "I never knew how annoying these alarms were. They're not so loud in the control room. And what use are the flashing lights?"

"It would be more helpful if the lights stayed on," Emily agreed, handing over the recalcitrant door lock to her. Sadly, even Jess' super systems control power couldn't make the door lock release.

All of a sudden, the alarm noise stopped, and the light levels stabilised.

"Er, sorry," a familiar voice said over the speaker system. "Sorry about that, everyone."

"Connor," Abby said flatly.

"Don't worry," Connor went on hastily. "We're not under attack, and the containment fields around the menagerie are still in place. Er. For now."

"Connor," Abby repeated, tapping at her comm. unit. She whipped the earpiece away from herself with a wince. Jess could hear the whine of the feedback from across the room.

There was some hurried noise over the main speaker system, an appalling screeching noise, and then Jess was positive she could hear Lester barking "Get it fixed now! I have a helicopter waiting to get me to Glyndebourne!"

"Basically, the computer seems to think that the ARC is in a lockdown situation," Connor's voice continued, after another ear-shattering screech. "It's sealed all the doors, so wherever you are, you're going to be there until we can get them open again. All remote comm. units are down. Systems are going up and down faster than we can cope with them so just…."

His voice suddenly disappeared.

"Great," Abby sighed. "I just knew that something like this was going to happen. Is having just one night off so much to ask?"

She sat on one of the uncomfortable wooden slatted benches, looking miserable.

"I'm sure it won't take Connor long to sort out the problem," Emily said kindly, coming to sit next to Abby. "He's very good at this sort of thing."

"Yeah," Abby said gratefully. "He is."

"Shit shit shit shit," Connor said, blowing on his fingers as he danced away from a junction box in his lab. Sparks were still flying, and he stamped on one or two that had landed too close to his feet.

"No luck?" Matt demanded, hunting through the supply locker in the corner of the room for something to prise the door to Connor's lab open with.

"Not a sausage," Connor said gloomily as he tried his computer station again. "My patch into the main communication system just went up in smoke." He waved his hand in the air. "Literally."

Becker was staring at the firmly closed door, daring it to stay shut in the face of his menacing look. At the moment, the door was winning.

"We don't have any comms at all?" he clarified. "We heard Lester."

Connor shook his head. "From what I can see, the comms system was totally fried. It's picking up input from mikes all across the ARC, and spitting out parts of it across the loudspeaker network."

He was interrupted by another screech, then the comms system broadcasting from the medical bay, where the duty team there were anxiously running through their preparedness drill.

"See what I mean?" Connor said, jabbing at his keyboard. "Nobody in medical was actually reporting to anyone. The mike just picked up the conversation in the room."

"So what we say could be heard by anyone?" Becker clarified. "Anywhere?"

"At the moment," Connor said.

"Fix that," Becker replied, just as Matt said, "Get the doors open."

The two men stared at each other, frowning. Connor's eyes darted back and forth between them, waiting to see who was going to back down first.

"Getting out of here is more important than fixing the comms," Matt said firmly.

"Jess will be sorting that out in the control room," argued Becker. "We're going to need comms up and running to sort out what the hell went wrong."

"Jess isn't in the control room," Connor said helpfully. "I wish she was, she knows more about the ARC's systems than I do. If she was at her desk, we could get this sorted out pretty quickly. But she's off duty."

"The hen night," Matt said flatly, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar concept.

Connor shrugged. "They've probably already left," he said sadly.

The reason Becker and Matt were in his lab in the first place was to extricate him from his research so they could go on his stag party. Not that it would have been much of a stag party, Connor knew; Abby had banned him from having a stripper, Matt had never been to a stag do before on the grounds that he came from an apocalyptic wasteland where water was scarce and nipple tassels were scarcer, and Becker…well, Becker had never seemed to the type to cut loose and relax with the boys. Connor was half-convinced that when Becker went home at night it was to plug into a wall socket and recharge. Maybe he was an advanced T-series, he mused, sent from the future to help them against their fight against dinosaurs. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, only with much cooler hair…

"…anything we can do?"

Becker's voice derailed Connor's runaway train of thought.

"Sorry?" Connor blinked, dragged back to reality.

"Is there anything we can do?" Becker repeated carefully, with the patient tones of a man that herded scientists and dinosaurs for a living, and much preferred the dinosaurs.

"Uh, no. Not really," Connor said, studying his screen. "Not from here, at any road. It's up to the duty team in the control room. And Lester, of course."

Another deafening screech, and Lester's voice boomed throughout the building.

"…sodding third act of _Parsifal_, which I believe _wasn't_ scored to include the sound of a _helicopter landing in the field next door_…"

"Great," Matt said heavily. "We'll be out of here in no time."

The sound of a champagne cork being inexpertly popped from a bottle and ricocheting across the tiled changing area made Jess jump. Emily brandished the open bottle and three plastic champagne flutes.

"Where did this come from?" Abby asked, accepting one of the brimming flutes.

"We were going to have pre-party drinks in the cafeteria," Jess explained, "for anybody who was on duty and couldn't come to the hen party."

"I've been told it's traditional for brides-to-be to wear this," Emily said doubtfully, gingerly holding a couple of L-plates held together by string. "But I have no idea why."

"You didn't have to go to all this trouble," Abby said, clearly touched.

"Yes we did!" Jess insisted. "You're the first member to the ARC team to get married. We had to celebrate. Put the L-plates on."

Raising a wry eyebrow, Abby slid the L-plates over her head.

"What do they signify?" Emily asked, looking at them again, clearly puzzled.

"They're usually used on cars when a learner driver is behind the wheel," Jess explained. "To warn people that an inexperienced driver has control of the car."

"Brides wear them on their hen nights as a form of joke," Abby added, seeing that Emily was still puzzled. "It's supposed to imply that the bride to be is a virgin," she finished.

"Oh," Emily exclaimed, happier. "I understand."

All three women took large sips from their flutes.

"But…" she began, then broke off. "No, I'm sorry."

"Go on," Abby said smiling. "It's alright."

Emily looked slightly embarrassed. "It's just that you and Connor live together, in one room, and you're not married, so…"

She trailed off again, her staunchly Victorian upbringing colliding with the differing morals of the twenty first century.

"Oh, I'm not a virgin," Abby said airily. "Far from it, trust me."

She smiled wickedly.

"Much more fun on the wedding night that way, for everybody concerned."

Emily sighed, and drank more of her champagne. Abby glanced at Jess, who stared at her pointedly. Marriage in the nineteenth century was decidedly different for women from Emily's class. She had said herself that she had not been consulted over her choice of husband.

"I was a virgin on my wedding night," Emily said glumly. "I wish I had been given L plates. And one of these funny books."

She rummaged around in the plastic bag full of novelty hen night items that Jess had bulk ordered from the Ann Summers website and pulled out an illustrated book of sexual positions.

"Was your husband…not very nice?" Jess asked lamely, wincing at the childishness of the question. He had been willing to entomb his wife in a public mental institution, and then shoot her. Chances were, he hadn't been the most generous of lovers.

"Thomas Hobbes once wrote that life was nasty, brutish and short," Emily replied, draining her champagne flute. "He may well have been writing about my husband."

She peered at some of the more lurid pictures in the book.

"In _all_ respects," she finished.

Abby and Jess exchanged a look, and then burst into a fit of giggles. Emily was only a second behind them.

"More champagne!" Emily demanded, refilling her glass and topping up the other women's flutes. "And tell me, is _this_ actually possible, or will it end up in someone straining a muscle?"

"Turn it off," Matt demanded, looking horrified. "Turn it off, _now_!"

"I can't!" Connor said, tapping frantically at his keyboard.

Behind them, Becker started to throw himself bodily at the door. The door was still winning.

hr

"_That's _a good one," Abby said decisively, turning to page seventy two. "As long as your shoulders are up to it."

"Gosh," Emily said, her flashing plastic tiara somewhat askew. "I didn't know someone's leg could bend that way."

"You have to be careful," Jess warned. "It totally ruins the mood if you get a cramp."

She was wearing a neon pink feather boa, and dangling earrings with small phalluses hanging off them. They were two thirds of the way down the first bottle of champagne, and there were four more in the storage locker.

"Jess Parker," Abby said, looking at her in admiration. "You are a dark horse. I wouldn't have pegged you as page seventy two girl."

Jess snorted into her champagne, and wished she hadn't as the bubbles went straight up her nose.

"I'm not only a page seventy two girl," she informed her friends archly, once the dribbling had stopped. "I'm a page seventy six to eighty seven girl as well."

She finished the rest of her flute as Abby and Emily flicked through to page eighty seven.

"Sideways?" Emily asked, turning the book on its edge, both aghast and curious in equal measures.

"And upside down?" Abby said, grabbing the book back and peering at it again.

"It's amazing what yoga can do for your flexibility," Jess said, rummaging through the plastic bag. "Anybody for a chocolate willy?"

If it were possible, Connor thought in amusement, Becker looked even more expressionless than usual. Which was unusual, when you considered what was coming over the speakers.

"Turn. It. Off." Becker spat, through tight lips and grinding teeth.

"Trust me, I would if I could," Connor said for the umpteenth time. "But I can't."

"Oh God," Becker said, as girlish squealing about the surprise liquid centre of the chocolate willies filled the room. "I'm not sure I can take much more of this."

"Here," said Matt, passing him a large, heavy hip flask. "This may help numb the pain."

Becker took a swig from the flask, and swallowed heavily.

"That," he said, after a moment, "is _extremely_ good whisky."

Matt nodded. "It should be, considering I took it from the bottle Lester has stashed in his office."

Becker took another gulp, and passed the flask back to Matt.

"As long as they stay talking about the book, we'll be fine," he said, an air of desperation in his voice.

A buzzing noise filled the room.

"Ooh, what's this for?" a tipsy Emily was heard to ask, and the men collectively groaned.

"Over here, mate," Connor said, appropriating the flask.

"Get that feed switched off," Matt growled, grabbing the flask from Connor's hand. "Think how embarrassed they'll be when they find out everyone in the ARC has heard them get drunk and talk about sex."

Sighing, Connor went back to fighting with the computer controls while Becker started to try to prise the door open with his bare hands, cursing at it under his breath. It continued to taunt him with its steadfast durability.

Emily's eyes were widened to a comical degree.

"And it's…_legal,_ for people to buy these?" she asked, staring at the vibrator as if it were an example of alien technology.

Jess snorted. "Legal?" she said, emptying her flute and refilling it from the second bottle of champagne, which was feeling a lot lighter than it should. "It should be made compulsory for all women to have them. Much better than a boyfriend."

"I wouldn't say that!" Abby said loyally.

Jess blew a drunken raspberry.

"You're only saying that because you have one," she said accurately. "Well, a fiancé. Which is the same thing, only with a ring. We single girls," Jess continued, indicating Emily with a generous sweep of her hand which saw most of the champagne in her glass slosh onto the floor, "We single girls need them. They're cheap to run. Easy to clean. They don't hog the bedcovers or the remote control. You don't have to put up with underpants on the floor or wet towels on the bed. No nonsense, straight forward orgasms, every time. One night it's Brad Pitt, the next it's the guy from the flat upstairs with the nice hair and the expensive aftershave. Your choice."

She finished the rest of her glass of champagne, her cheeks flushed not with alcohol but with emotion.

"Connor puts tomato ketchup on every meal, without even tasting it first to see if it needs it," Abby said eventually. "It drives me mad. Nobody needs that much tomato in their lives. But I love him anyway."

"I know you do," Jess said, slinging an arm over Abby's shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. "And that's brilliant. And you're getting married, which is even more brilliant, because you won't have to pretend that it's Brad Pitt or Mr Nice Hair giving you orgasms. It'll be Connor, because he loves you, and you won't want anybody else."

"Yeah," sighed Abby.

"What's an orgasm?" Emily asked, tucking the vibrator into her handbag.

"TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!" Matt yelled, shoving Connor aside from the keyboard and pounding at it madly.

Becker had gone past cursing at the door, and was now attacking it with a lab stool. The stool bent and buckled under the forces of his swings. The door remained unscathed.

"I can't turn it off!" Connor reminded Matt, a little stung about the remark about his tomato sauce usage. Abby had never complained about it before, and she ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches, which were completely gross. He would still snog her after she ate one though.

"Maybe I can…get out of the way, you Hulking out isn't helping anything…maybe I can just isolate the feed from that set of mikes…"

The whisky from Matt's flask wasn't helping his coordination much, but eventually Connor managed to get his instructions through to the computer.

"Alright, I haven't been able to shut the mikes down, but I have isolated their feed to this room," he explained to the others. "So we're the only ones that can hear them," he clarified. "It's not brilliant, but it's the best I can do from here."

Matt nodded, still looking grim.

"Not a word will be said about what they talk about, d'you hear?" he warned Becker and Connor.

"Never," Becker said, his voice clipped and short.

"I won't say a word," Connor promised.

"Connor's is lovely," Abby said, easing the cork out of the third bottle. "Not too big, not too small. Just right."

"Shut up," Connor said through gritted teeth. "Just shut your faces, the pair of you."

Passing the flask between them, Matt and Becker howled with laughter.

"You're Baby Bear," Becker said, snorting with laughter. "Just right."

"That's your new name," Matt decided. "Baby Bear Temple."

"I didn't realise that they came in different sizes, not until I saw that book," Emily admitted. "My husband was decidedly sub-par in comparison."

"How about Matt?" Abby asked wickedly. "You stayed with him for a few nights before you moved into the ARC. Don't tell me you didn't see Little Matt. Or is it Big Matt?"

"Well, which is it?" the newly-christened Baby Bear Temple asked maliciously. "Little Matt or Big Matt?"

"I've never…" Matt spluttered. "We've never…for God's sake, she was a married woman!"

"Until the dromaeosaurus ate her husband," Becker pointed out. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap. Flask, please."

"I wouldn't know," Emily said primly. "I was a married woman when I stayed in Matt's apartment. And he was a perfect gentleman the entire time. He slept on the sofa, I slept in his bedroom."

"That's a shame," Jess said, investigating the bag of party favours and finding some strawberry lollies with a predictable shape.

Abby and Jess started to laugh, and Emily eventually joined in.

"So you two aren't…" Abby began expectantly.

"We aren't…." Emily repeated, looking a little puzzled.

"Re-enacting pages ten to seventeen?" Abby said, waving the book at her.

"Oh, no," Emily said, sounding a little sad. "When Matt and I…spend time together, he's always very…courteous."

"I am so sorry," Abby said, in a horrified tone. Jess sniggered.

"He's behaving exactly as a gentleman should behave," Emily snapped, swallowing the rest of her drink and pouring herself another, using both hands to grip the bottle which wobbled dangerously. "Although…"

"Although…" prompted Jess, sucking on one of the lollipops.

"After reading that book, I'm beginning to wish that maybe he didn't," Emily confessed.

"Well, you can't leave it all up to him," Abby opined. "You've got to show him the way."

"Ah," Emily said knowledgably. "Flirting."

"Yes, flirting," Abby acknowledged. "Also, taking the initiative."

"Kiss him first," advised Jess.

"Unbutton yourself a little," offered Abby.

"Get him naked," Emily mused.

Jess choked a little on her lolly, and Abby, who had been in mid-swallow, spat some of her champagne out again as she laughed.

"Oh man, are you in for it now," Connor giggled, pulling again on the flask.

"Emily's a take-charge sort of person," Becker pointed out helpfully. "Now that she knows it's alright to take charge of this, well…"

"Shut up," Matt said, loosening his collar a little. "And pass that flask, you bastards."

"This night has been most illuminating," Emily said, taking care not to fall over the syllables. "Women didn't talk like this in my time."

"I think they probably did," Jess said drunkenly. "I just don't think you were listening."

"You're right," Emily sighed. "I didn't have many married friends that I could talk to about…this. And we wouldn't have got so foxed."

"To getting foxed," Abby pronounced, raising her glass and laughing.

"To getting orgasms," Emily countered, clinking hers against Abby's.

"To getting married," Jess said, bashing her glass against the others a little too heavily. "Congratulations, Abby and Connor."

"Here here," Emily replied, and they all drained their glasses.

"I'm getting married," Abby said happily.

"Hence the L plates and the tiaras and feather boas and willy-shaped novelty sweets," Jess said helpfully.

"And Emily's getting Matt naked," Abby went on.

"With orgasms!" Emily chipped in.

"With orgasms," Abby went on. "But what are you getting, Jess?"

"Drunk," Jess said decidedly.

They all laughed uproariously at her wit for a while, before calming down again to look for the last bottle.

"No," Emily said carefully. "Abby has Connor and I have Matt, and Jess has Captain Becker."

"The flask, the flask, the flask," Becker said quickly, grabbing it from a howling Connor.

"No I don't," Jess said, a little sadly. "Which is a shame because he has lovely hair and comfortable shoulders. But no. I don't."

"Lovely hair!" Matt and Connor chanted, lurching forward to ruffle it.

Becker crab-walked backwards, still pulling at the flask.

It was bloody Sandhurst all over again, he thought grimly.

"But it all makes sense," Abby said, with the confidence of the terminally drunk. "I have Connor and Emily has Matt and you should have Becker. Becker should have a name," she finished, a little confused. "You can't call him Becker in bed."

"He has a name," Jess said.

"Well," said Emily. "Don't keep us in suspenders."

She snorted in laughter at her own wit.

"I'm not telling," Jess said, tapping her nose and missing the first few times. "It's a secret. Ssssh."

"Just what is your name?" Connor asked, intrigued.

"Becker," Becker said pointedly. He stared at Connor until Connor remembered all the ways that Becker could kill him using his thumbs alone, and backed down.

"You should absolutely be having sex with that man," Abby told Jess. _Somebody_ should be having sex with him. It's criminal waste not to."

"He's impervious to my wiles," Jess said sadly. "Such as they are."

"No, he's not," Abby protested. "He brought you chocolate."

"Only because Matt forgot," Jess pointed out. "He was probably trying to one-up him."

"You should have seen him when you got bitten" Emily said. "He was frantic."

There was a pause as they all considered that.

"As frantic as Becker gets, anyway," Emily added.

"I don't remember much about that," Jess admitted. "Just his arms. They were all…warm. And strong."

There was another pause, as they all considered Becker's arms.

"I'm sorry," Jess said, shaking her head. "I can't go around getting bitten by disgusting insects just so he remembers I'm actually a woman, not part of the office furniture."

She looked so dejected that Abby and Emily both hugged her. They sat together in a boozy pile of arms, legs and hen night accessories.

"We can find you someone else," Abby offered.

"Like who?" Jess asked, perking up slightly.

"Like who?" Becker demanded angrily, staring at the loudspeaker.

"Aha!" Connor said triumphantly. "You _do_ fancy her!"

The only stool in the lab sacrificed to the unrepentantly immovable door, the three men had ended up sitting in row along the wall, passing the flask up the line as they listened to the women get more and more drunk.

Becker waved at him dismissively. "Just…just hypothetically," he said. "Like who?"

"Someone who acts as if she's a woman, mate," Connor said, shrugging. "No offense, I know you've got your action man, Mr Danger, I've got a great big gun thing working for you, but you don't exactly exude charm."

Matt nodded knowledgably.

"Jess is a lovely girl," he told Becker. "She deserves a bit of romance."

"Romance," Becker echoed, sounding a bit lost.

"Romance," Connor said firmly. "You know, flowers, meals out, presents."

"I did buy her chocolate," Becker pointed out. "The big bar."

"But Jess is the one doing all the leg work," Matt said. "She's flirting her little heart out, and you don't do anything."

"She brought me a takeaway when I was on stake out," Becker said quietly. "She went miles out of her way. And she ended up disarming a bomb that would have killed me."

"That should have deserved some flowers at the very least," Connor said.

"He did risk his life to go and get her epi-pen," Matt said, in Becker's defence.

"He would have done that for anybody," Connor argued.

Becker sat between them, nodded and felt awful. He would have gone for the epi-pen for any of his team. Yes, he'd been frantic about Jess, but that wasn't a Jess-specific situation.

"God, what does she see in me?" he said in despair.

"You have lovely hair," Matt said solemnly. "And big strong arms."

"You can't depend on that though," Connor warned him. "What's going to happen when you go bald?"

Becker clutched at his hair.

"Exactly," Connor said with satisfaction. "Be smart. Grab Jess now, while you can, before she decides she'd be happier with somebody who knows what Interflora is."

"A pity Lester's already married," Abby said, nudging Jess. "You could have gone out with him."

Jess, from her position sprawled across the laps of Abby and Emily, pulled a face,

"You already run his professional life," Abby pointed out. "It wouldn't be such a stretch to run his personal one."

"He's a sweetheart," Jess said from around a strawberry flavoured penis lolly. "But I don't think so."

"David from the menagerie?" Emily offered. "He's very handsome."

"He's seeing Linda from tech support," Jess told her.

"John from Medical?" Abby said, wracking her brains to come up with a suitable man for Jess.

"He's gay," Jess said mournfully.

Abby intercepted Emily's puzzled expression. "I'll explain later," she told her. "But you can look at the back of the book if you want."

"Oh," Emily exclaimed, enlightenment dawning. "Gosh."

She buried herself in the book again, learning something new with every turn of the page.

"No," sighed Jess. "It has to be Becker. Except that it won't be Becker. So you'll all go off and get married and have babies and puppies and mortgages and I'll be Bridget Jones, getting pissed and eating too much chocolate. On my own."

She looked around in dismay at the empty champagne bottles and chocolate willy wrappers strewn across the locker room floor.

"And so it begins," she said mournfully.

"Bloody hell," muttered Emily, still nose-deep in the book. "I bet that hurts."

"It really does," Jess agreed, and began to sniffle.

"That's it," Becker said, pulling himself to his feet and lurching unsteadily towards the door. "She's crying. She's not allowed to cry."

He picked up the remains of the stool and bashed at the keypad mounted next to the door. The fascia popped off, revealing the wiring underneath. He began to yank at it, causing small sparks to fly through the air.

"Becker, mate, that's not going to work," Connor said, stumbling over his feet slightly as he moved towards the door. "Lockdown is that. Lock-down. Nobody can open the doors until someone in the control room presses a button and cancels it."

"This door is pressurised," Becker muttered, still rooting about in the wiring. "Release the pressure, open the door."

He found what he was looking for; buried deep beneath the wiring was a small trip-switch. He'd read about it when he first took this job, a tiny footnote in one of the many technical journals he'd been given to memorise about how the ARC functioned. Not all the doors in the ARC were like this; in fact, very few were. He was lucky that he remembered the fact at all, given that he was as drunk as he was. All the whisky sloshing around in his brain must have washed it loose, he thought proudly, as the door depressurised and opened.

"Go to the control room," Becker ordered Connor. "See if you can help them open the rest of the…"

He was cut off by the noise of multiple doors opening and metal barriers rolling back into place.

"This unofficial lockdown is over," Lester's voice said irritably over the loudspeakers. "All doors and corridors are now open and accessible except, I pray, the doors to the menagerie, which I would prefer to be shut. Mr Temple, I suggest you go and collect your fiancée and the rest of her party from the ladies locker room. I remind you that we have recycling banks in the car park for the many empty bottles you will no doubt find there."

"If you'd waited five minutes, the door would have opened on its own," Matt complained to Becker, knowing that he'd be responsible for filling out the damage repair request paperwork.

"That door's always hated me," Becker said, giving it a victory kick on the way past.

There were a lot of empty bottles. There was a lot of plastic packaging strewn across the floor too, as well as stray feathers from the feather boas and a few remaining penis lollies. The three women were huddled together, Emily and Abby cradling Jess, who was teary-eyed.

"I don't want to have to buy a cat," she was telling Abby seriously. "It may poop in one of my shoes."

"You don't have to buy a cat," Abby told her patiently. She patted Jess' hair clumsily. "I'll loan you Rex."

The noise of the door opening made all three women look up.

"Connor!" Abby said joyfully! "I love you! And your penis is just right!"

"Yeah," he sighed, moving into the room and kissing his fiancée. "Everyone knows about that now."

Jess struggled to a sitting position as Connor managed to pull Abby up off the floor and into his arms. She stumbled, the drink finally catching up with her.

"I love you too, you alcoholic," he said fondly. "Come and sit over here and drink some water while I clean up the floor."

Abby may have been drunk, but Connor wasn't exactly sober either. The video feed of him chasing champagne bottles around the floor made it to that Christmas party's video, which also included one of Becker's soldiers running straight into a wall while training and David from the menagerie slipping in a puddle of mammoth urine and falling flat on his back.

"Matt!" Emily said joyfully. "I have a very educational book, and as a modern twenty first century woman I want to have lots of orgasms."

"Why don't we worry about them later," Matt said, slightly red-faced. "I'll help get you back to your room, first."

"And you mustn't worry if you've got a Little Matt," she said solemnly as they lurched out of the locker room and down the corridor. "My new vibrator is very big."

"You can throw that bloody thing away right now," Matt growled, and Emily's squeals as she refused to hand over her handbag could be heard fading as they moved further away.

"Hi," Becker said, crouching down.

"Hi," Jess said through her sniffles.

"I know it's not as romantic as a bunch of flowers, but I do have a hanky," he said, pulling a clean, fresh handkerchief from a pocket.

"Thank you," she said gratefully.

She dabbed at her eyes and winced as she saw the amount of mascara that came off on the white cotton.

"I must look a fright," she grumbled.

"You look beautiful," Becker said honestly. "And I'm sorry I didn't say that before. Please don't go out with Dave from the menagerie, or the gay doctor."

"Who should I go out with then?" Jess asked warily.

"Go out with me," Becker said. "Um, that is, if you'd like to."

"Can I touch your hair?" Jess said, after a minute's thought.

Becker smiled. "If you like," he said. "But I want to touch yours too."

"Alright," Jess said. "Help me up."

Becker did more than that; as soon as Jess pulled herself onto some incredibly sexy but hopelessly impractical shoes, he hoisted her firmly into his arms, wobbling only slightly.

"A little birdie told me you liked my big, strong arms," he said quietly into her ear as he walked in a mostly straight line towards one of the unoccupied guest rooms.

"They're warm," Jess sighed happily. "And you have comfortable shoulders."

She laid her head happily on one of them and carded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

"Maybe you'll remember it more this time," he said as he ducked into the lift and used one of Jess' feet to hit the button for the right floor.

Jess didn't answer. He risked his balance for a quick look down and saw her slumped, asleep.

He really wished that he was the sort of bloke that would crash out next to a drunk girl in what amounted to a hotel room, but he really wasn't. He laid Jess out on the bed in one of the spare rooms, took off her shoes and laid them carefully by the foot of the bed. He got her a glass of water and put it on the nightstand, and found some paracetamol in the cupboard in the bathroom. He put them next to the water and, as an afterthought, added the wastepaper bin just in case she was sick. With nothing left to do except stare at the elegant length of shapely leg sticking out from the red dress she was wearing, he left the room.

Jess woke eight hours later and really wished she hadn't bothered. She found the water and the paracetamol, and with great control of her rolling stomach, decided she didn't need to use the wastebin.

She caught a taxi home, as she was positive she wasn't able to drive, showered, changed, downed more paracetamol and caught another taxi back to work. Emily brought her a large coffee, a happy smile on her face despite looking pale and drawn.

"The twenty first century is a wonderful time," she told Jess solemnly, then went back to join Matt, who was standing in the doorway staring adoringly at her.

Sipping carefully at the coffee, Jess walked past Connor's lab, where Abby was wearing dark glasses and holding a selection of screwdrivers as Connor did something intricate with the wiring of a door mechanism. Abby nodded at her, then winced. Jess understood, and carried on.

Snickering staff had filled her in on what had happened last night; thankfully, for some reason the loudspeakers had stopped broadcasting their conversation before it got too raunchy. She was not looking forward to a day in the control room after announcing that she was a page seventy six to eighty seven girl. Indeed, some joker had already left a gift bag sitting on her chair.

Steeling herself for what was inside, Jess was surprised to discover a shoebox. She recognised the distinctive packaging, and her stomach lurched in anticipation. The signature buff shoebox had the bold black signature printed across the top of it, and when she opened the lid, the shoes inside had the requisite red soles.

They were _amazing_ shoes. Pink, glossy, open toed wedges with large pink flowers fixed just above the peep-toe. They were outrageous and fun and exactly the thing she would have picked for herself, if she were willing to pay the exorbitant price.

There was another package in the bag; chocolates, handmade, from an upmarket chocolatier. And there was a note. Grinning, she opened it.

"I know that flowers are the traditional choice, but I thought that you'd enjoy these more. Dinner, tonight? Dinosaurs notwithstanding?"

He'd even signed it with his first name. He was serious.

She kicked off her current shoes, slipped on the wedges and snapped a shot of her feet. She texted it to him, thanking him for the perfect present and agreed to dinner. She then tucked the giftbag away under her desk, sipped her coffee and logged onto the system to see what she could do to sort out the mess that happened yesterday.

Maybe buying that cat could wait for a little while…


End file.
